12
December 1889 - Women and children should work no more than eight hours a day, a
public meeting in Adelaide was told yesterday.
A law should be passed to prevent the widespread practice in the clothing trade where women worked up to 16 hours a day. Women were often encouraged to take their materials home and continue sewing well into the night, the meeting was told.
Speaking at the meeting held in the Adelaide Town Hall, Mr M. W. Green called for speedy legislation to stop women being exploited by unscrupulous and greedy employers. To the cheers of the crowd, Mr Green demanded that the colony’s politicians address nothing, and subsequently give them 2 shillings and 6 pence a week, until after a number of years they perhaps receive 10 shillings a week, which is an exceptional rate,’ he said. ‘How could they expect the morality of these poor girls to be maintained under such circumstances?’
Mr Green’s words were echoed by those in a sermon given by the Reverend H. M. Pollitt last month at his church in Hindmarsh.
The Reverend Pollitt told his congregation he had visited a ‘pale, worn, broken-down woman’ in Adelaide Hospital who had been employed as a shirtmaker. The woman told him she earned just 4 shillings and 6 pence a dozen for making shirts with six buttonholes, and had to find her own thread. ‘If you or I had handed her the money, could we have done so without a blush of shame? Could we have felt that we were doing as we would be done by?’ the Reverend Pollitt said. ‘One thing I know—the Christian religion calls upon us to do anything rather than sit down contentedly while such a fate overwhelms our brothers and sisters.’